Xiaoxue Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. Her research focuses on how political factors and the social, organisational, and technological constraints faced by developing economies shape institutional development, and how the resulting institutions, in turn, influence economic outcomes. Her recent projects have examined rural households' land and labour allocation under communal tenure, the impact of fiscal capacity on resource allocation, and the role of kinship networks in sustaining communal risk-sharing institutions amid widespread rural-to-urban migration.